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Tuesday, November 10, 2009

The Mets' Hebron Fundraiser?

The NY Mets are allowing the Hebron Fund -- dedicated to raising money for Israeli settlers in the West Bank city of Hebron -- to host a fundraiser at a club in their stadium, despite virulent criticism by peace activists who say the group supports violations of international law. The Tablet mocks the Mets for having given themselves "a perfect coda, perhaps, to the team’s year of rancor and disappointment," while Jeffrey Goldberg simply says "I can think of better causes."

Hebron is a tougher case than many give it credit for, as it had a Jewish community that predated the establishment of Israel, one which was forced out after a 1929 massacre. Nonetheless, Hebron is hardly the only town whose residents were forced to flee due to Jewish/Palestinian violence -- and it would not represent the only set of victims who we agree ought not return to their homes as part of a broader peace agreement. Meanwhile, as it happens, the current Jewish denizens of Hebron are among the most radical and violent right-wingers in the settlement movement -- also, shall we say, diminishing my sympathy. The neighboring settlement of Kiryat Arba (effectively part of the Jewish resettlement of Hebron) hosts a memorial to the far-right racist (and banned) Kach Party, as well as the grave of Israeli terrorist Baruch Goldstein, who massacred dozens of Arabs (to the widespread condemnation of Israeli society as a whole, but cheers of Hebron's Jewish residents).

In other words, the Hebron Fund is raising money for a group of extremists who, if not violent themselves, are certainly sympathetic to it. That's important to note, and right to condemn.

8 comments:

If Jews do not have a right to Hebron which is home to the cave of the patriarchs then they do not have a right to Tel Aviv which historically less Jewish. Judea and Samaria belong to the nation of Israel.

I was interested the other day when I heard that the de facto Saudi ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah, made a statement which was received by many in this country as if it were a statement of fact, as if it were something new, a concept for peace in the Middle East that no one had ever heard of before. I was kind of shocked that it was so well received by many people who had been down this road before.I suggest to you that what Crown Prince Abdullah talked about a few days ago was not new at all. He talked about the fact that under the Abdullah plan, Arabs would normalize relations with Israel in exchange for the Jewish state surrendering the territory it received after the Six Day War, as if that were something new...[But] there isn't anything new about the prospect of giving up land that is rightfully Israel's land in order to have peace. When it gets right down to it, the land doesn't make that much difference, because Yasser Arafat and others don't recognize Israel's right to any of the land. They do not recognize Israel's right to exist. Yasser Arafat and others don't recognize Israel's right to any of the land. They do not recognize Israel's right to exist.I will discuss seven reasons why Israel is entitled to the land they have and that it should not be a part of the peace process. If this is something that Israel wants to do, it is their business to do it. But anyone who has tried to put the pressure on Israel to do this is wrong. We are going to be hit by skeptics who are going to say we will be attacked because of our support for Israel, and if we get out of the Middle East -- that is us -- all the problems will go away. That is just not true. If we withdraw, all of these problems will again come to our door. I have some observations to make about that.But I would like to reemphasize once again the seven reasons that Israel has the right to their land.1) ARCHEOLOGYThe first reason is that Israel has the right to the land because of all of the archeological evidence. All the archeological evidence supports it. Every time there is a dig in Israel, it does nothing but support the fact that Israelis have had a presence there for 3,000 years. The coins, the cities, the pottery, the culture -- there are other people, groups that are there, but there is no mistaking the fact that Israelis have been present in that land for 3,000 years. It predates any claims that other peoples in the region may have. The ancient Philistines are extinct. Many other ancient peoples are extinct. They do not have the unbroken line to this date that the Israelis have. Even the Egyptians of today are not racial Egyptians of 2,000, 3,000 years ago. They are primarily an Arab people. The land is called Egypt, but they are not the same racial and ethnic stock as the old Egyptians of the ancient world. The Israelis are in fact descended from the original Israelites

2) HISTORYThe second proof of Israel's right to the land is the historic right. History supports it totally and completely. We know there has been an Israel up until the time of the Roman Empire. The Romans conquered the land. Israel had no homeland, although Jews were allowed to live there. They were driven from the land in two dispersions: One in 70 A.D. and the other in 135 A.D. But there was always a Jewish presence in the land. The Turks, who took over about 700 years ago and ruled the land up until about World War One, had control. Then the land was conquered by the British. The Turks entered World War One on the side of Germany. The British knew they had to do something to punish Turkey, and also to break up that empire that was going to be a part of the whole effort of Germany in World War One. So the British sent troops against the Turks in the Holy Land.One of the generals who was leading the British armies was a man named Allenby. Allenby was a Bible-believing Christian. He carried a Bible with him everywhere he went and he knew the significance of Jerusalem. The night before the attack against Jerusalem to drive out the Turks, Allenby prayed that God would allow him to capture the city without doing damage to the holy places.That day, Allenby sent World War One biplanes over the city of Jerusalem to do a reconnaissance mission. You have to understand that the Turks had at that time never seen an airplane. So there they were, flying around. They looked in the sky and saw these fascinating inventions and did not know what they were, and they were terrified by them.They dared not fight against a prophet from God, so Allenby captured Jerusalem without firing a single shot.Then they were told they were going to be opposed by a man named Allenby the next day, which means, in their language, "man sent from God" or "prophet from God." They dared not fight against a prophet from God, so the next morning, when Allenby went to take Jerusalem, he went in and captured it without firing a single shot.The British government was grateful to Jewish people around the world, particularly to one Jewish chemist who helped them manufacture niter. Niter is an ingredient that was used in nitroglycerin which was sent over from the New World. But they did not have a way of getting it to England. The German U-boats were shooting on the boats, so most of the niter they were trying to import to make nitroglycerin was at the bottom of the ocean. But a man named Weitzman, a Jewish chemist, discovered a way to make it from materials that existed in England.

As a result, they were able to continue that supply.The British at that time said they were going to give the Jewish people a homeland. That is all written down in history. They were gratified that the Jewish people, the bankers, came through and helped finance the war.The homeland that Britain said it would set aside consisted of all of what is now Israel and all of what was then the nation of Jordan -- the whole thing. That was what Britain promised to give the Jews in 1917. In the beginning, there was some Arab support for this action. There was not a huge Arab population in the land at that time, and there is a reason for that. The land was not able to sustain a large population of people. It just did not have the development it needed to handle those people, and nobody really wanted this land. It was considered to be worthless land.Mark Twain -- Samuel Clemens -- took a tour of Palestine in 1867. This is how he described that land. We are talking about Israel now. He said: "A desolate country whose soil is rich enough but is given over wholly to weeds. A silent, mournful expanse. We never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country."Where was this great Palestinian nation? It did not exist. It was not there. Palestinians were not there. Palestine was a region named by the Romans, but at that time it was under the control of Turkey, and there was no large mass of people there because the land would not support them.This is the report that the Palestinian Royal Commission, created by the British, made. It quotes an account of the conditions on the coastal plain along the Mediterranean Sea in 1913. The Palestinian Royal Commission said: "The road leading from Gaza to the north was only a summer track, suitable for transport by camels or carts. No orange groves, orchards or vineyards were to be seen until one reached the Yavnev village. Houses were mud. Schools did not exist. The western part toward the sea was almost a desert. The villages in this area were few and thinly populated. Many villages were deserted by their inhabitants."That was 1913.The French author Voltaire described Palestine as "a hopeless, dreary place." In short, under the Turks the land suffered from neglect and low population. That is a historic fact. The nation became populated by both Jews and Arabs because the land came to prosper when Jews came back and began to reclaim it. If there had never been any archaeological evidence to support the rights of the Israelis to the territory, it is also important to recognize that other nations in the area have no longstanding claim to the country either.Did you know that Saudi Arabia was not created until 1913, Lebanon until 1920? Iraq did not exist as a nation until 1932, Syria until 1941. The borders of Jordan were established in 1946 and Kuwait in 1961. Any of these nations that would say Israel is only a recent arrival would have to deny their own rights as recent arrivals as well. They did not exist as countries. They were all under the control of the Turks.Historically, Israel gained its independence in 1948.

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